Brief Returns
by thehush
Summary: Jubilation Lee returns from Scotland a new person…


Brief Returns  
  
They weren't expecting this, especially now, especially since they hadn't heard from her since she joined up with Sean. Yet now, as he sat staring at the wall, her goodbye carved into it, he remembers that she had written a letter - one solitary letter.  
  
{Professor. I don't like how my family's evolving - guess it's my turn to make things change. Love, the girl you threw to the wind.}  
  
Funny, he thinks, it never crossed his mind that one day his young pupil would one-day take matters into her own hands and show them just how she felt. Never in all his years had he seen someone so calm, so precise in her methods - not even her mentor could hold such grace. But she had, she had and it terrified him.  
  
---  
  
Earlier that day  
  
{Jubilee?} Jonothan opened the front door and was surprised when Jubilee pushed past him. She had changed; he could gather that - hair chopped short, a couple of unlikely peircings, a tattoo peeking through her black tank top. {Uh, Jubes-} he stopped when she turned quickly around and stared him down with cold blue eyes.  
  
"Look why don't you drop the friendly 'how do you dos' and leave me alone. It's not like you care, anyway." She slid her hot pink sunglasses over her eyes and rushed up the stairs.  
  
He looked on after her, hurt filling his features - what had happened to her?  
  
----  
  
A bright voice echoed outside the door, "Professor?"  
  
Xavier looked up from his paperwork and searched beyond the door, trying to place the voice with a face. But something blocked him out - but that voice, it was so familiar. Preparing himself, he cleared his throat and answered in the politest voice possible. "Who is it?"  
  
Slowly, the door opened in a young woman stuck her head in, Asian features muddled with an eyebrow ring and a nose stud. "It's a sad day, when even Charles Xavier forgets his own student."  
  
Ah, now realization came to him. Behind the new look, there was his little Jubilation - a little older, yet somehow darker. He made sure she knew he was looking her over before motioning over toward a seat. "Miss Lee-"  
  
Suddenly the happy demeanor she was giving him dropped and she gave a harsh laugh. "Sorry, Xavier, I'm not here to stay - just here for some stuff of mine." She shrugged, "Even, who would want to stay with a bunch of fuck ups like you."  
  
Taken aback, Charles wasn't prepared for her to simply turn on her heel, walk up to his bookshelf, and take a raggedy book.  
  
She skipped out the door.  
  
----  
  
"Jubilee!" Emma stocked after her former student, "Jubilation Lee, I might not be your caretaker anymore, but I will not be talked to in such a-"  
  
The young woman stopped on her journey to kitchen and glanced angrily toward her old Headmistress. "Give it up, Frost. Look, I'm only here for a few of my things, you don't have to get your Victoria Secret wearing ass in a twist, kay?"  
  
Emma lunged forward and took a hold of Jubilee's wrist. To her surprise, not only had she changed on the outside - she had grown in the inside too. The older woman soon found herself with her arm twisted behind her and the wall very close.  
  
Jubilee's voice was the only defining clue that she was still around. "Oh I'm sorry, you know, if you had kept up with me, you might have known that I don't like being touched." There was a soft growl. "By anyone. Period." Off down the hall, there was a click of a door opening and she felt blood flowing back into her arm as if someone had let it go. Turning quickly, she found that Jubilee was gone and Jean was walking down the hall.  
  
----  
  
In the cool darkness, he found her there, searching through his room. He had been waiting for her, patiently. It bothered him that she hadn't come to him first, that she hadn't asked for him - searched for him.  
  
But now, she stood, holding onto the sword that he had brought back with him, in the days of Madipoor and Australia. Back when the little girl before him only worried about shopping and boy bands. Back when he knew her every move.  
  
"Sad, you taught me how to use this thing - but you never felt that I was grown enough to keep it." She looked at him through the black shadows that were supposed to cover his hiding place. But she saw through it - she had never seen through it before. "Funny that no matter how long I'm gone, none of you ever write, call, ask where I am, who I'm with, what I'm doing." He stepped out into the warm streams of light, spilling through the shades. Jubilee drew the sleek Samurai sword and pointed it toward him. "Stop. I'm done here - I only came for the book and this."  
  
Logan smiled up at her, trying to break the look of pure hatred that he had perfected - but it was set on her face. she meant it. He felt something in him ache - where _had_ she been? Who _had_ she been with? What _had_ she seen?  
  
"Jubilee, please put the sword down and tell me what's wro-" he gasped when she thrust the steel blade toward his head. His hands quickly pushed it aside, but the look in her eyes scared him. It was one of the few things he feared.  
  
She knew his weaknesses.  
  
Calmly, she slid the sword into her back sheath and smiled down at him. "The Cadillac still here?"  
  
Finding this the perfect opportunity to at least get a hold of her, so she'd listen, he sprang forward to grab her around the waist. What he wasn't expecting was that she was waiting for this move - and with one simple step, she was out of his reach and leaping onto his bed.  
  
Turning back from his place on the floor, he found out a terrifying fact: she wasn't holding back anymore. Bright, hot, plazmoids surrounded her body as she looked down on him, like a vengeful goddess. "You wanna know just how those kids burned down my room! Taking out everything I had?"  
  
----  
  
Hank wandered halfway through the door into the empty room before stopping, studying his long time mentor as he sat numbly in his wheelchair. The room had belonged to Jubilation Lee - an old friend and in many ways, a brilliant young woman.  
  
"Logan. He's burned very badly - but he'll recover. as always." He, with a nervous shutter, looked over toward the wall Charles was lost in.  
  
It read, carved out it sword: {You lied.} 


End file.
